Only Massachusetts requires police details at road work sites. Boston drivers are from Massachusetts. Coincidence? DrivingLikeAss.Com continues its study of the dual phenomena which are Boston: Police road-work details and Boston drivers.

Combining innovative technology with creative research design, DLA develops a psycho-motor test measurement of police detail impact on Boston motorists. Using the Galvanic Skin Sensitivity Index (GASSI) meter—a device that measures electrical conductivity on the surface of the skin to generate a numeric value of the relative “nervousness” of the subject—and the Foot-Leg Attenuation and Latency Normative Comparison (FLATULNC) meter to produce a reaction time score, the Sensate Balanced Derivative (SBD) DLA research finds that police details at road construction sites have virtually no effect on the behavior of Boston drivers.

The new DLA Labs study, Traffic Authority Figures & Their Effectiveness in the Modification of Ass-like Driving Behavior: A DLA Research Study, points to a possible sensory cortex dysfunction among Boston drivers. On the other hand, it could also be that they just like driving like ass.

In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that this story, while always on the DLA research calendar, was scheduled to be written later this year…and would have been had it not been pushed to the top of the list by two events. The first was the Boston Globe's annual review last month on the salaries of Boston police in which it was reported that overtime and "required" details at road work sites helped 107 Boston officers make more than $175,000 in 2007. The second was a DLA staff member’s coincidental and decidedly unsettling run-in with a state trooper over the weekend at a police detail near Andrew Square during which he was yelled at. And we are not talking just trying-to-be-heard-over-traffic yelling or heightened-urgency yelling or even I’m-really-mad-at-you yelling. We’re talking full on, veins popping from the side of his head, even-the-passersby-were-speechless yelling. It was the type of yelling that state troopers surely learn is guaranteed to make the mild-(and even the medium-) mannered and among us wet our pants….and probably would have had it not become a true Archimedean moment for our researcher.

The violation itself was not particularly notable…in fact it’s not even memorable since our suitably chastened staffer was so infused with academic and research vision that he immediately reversed direction, abandoning whatever mission on which he had set out, and sped directly to DLA Labs to share his brainstorm with a gathered, spellbound DLA staff.

Here’s how it works: our staffer was so stunned by the ferocity of his reprimand that he could actually feel his pupils dilate which, as every first year psych student knows, is one of the tell-tale signs of the acute stress response (or fight-or-flight response), that primitive reflex that prepares a wildebeest for the lion’s attack or the mouse for the cat’s pounce. It is also—so figured our researcher—the same response that causes drivers to hit the brakes, check their speedometers, break out in a sweat, and start working frantically on some sort of lame excuse every time they see a police cruiser parked on the side of the highway. Taking it one step further—which is what separates the research dilettante from true GENIUS!—our researcher wondered why this response shouldn’t produce an analogous condition in Boston drivers. That is, when confronted by a possibly stressful stimulus (confrontation with police authority) shouldn’t a Boston driver reflexively experience a psycho-physiological response that prepares him or her for the officer’s inevitable redress?

We all agreed that he was really on to something: was the acute stress response mechanism in Boston drivers absent? Dysfunctional? Massachusetts police groups claim that their presence at road construction sites is actually an issue of “public safety”, that they are “trained to deal with problems” as well as “make arrests”, if necessary, and yet we know that police presence seems to be relatively impotent as a weapon against ass-like driving. Moreover, we reasoned, perhaps police organizations in Massachusetts have come to the same realization and, rather than fight nature, they have decided to read the newspaper and keep enforcement to a minimum.

THE STUDY DESIGN
Not only did our eager staffer generate the hypothesis, he knew exactly how to construct the experiment. His experimental design called for two unique devices, one of which was so rarely used it had not been out of the storeroom since we stopped using ECT tests on new employees several years ago.

The first was the Galvanic Skin Sensitivity Index (GASSI) meter, a device using the same principle of galvanic skin response used in polygraph devices. Measuring the electrical conductivity of the skin (which fluctuates based on emotional reactions) the GASSI meter generates a numeric value of the relative “nervousness” or “stress arousal” of the subject and can be mapped closely to the autonomous acute stress reactions (see Table 1). GASSI ratings are used to make inferences about the subject’s authority anxiety. (See “Authority Stimuli Fear Generation Ratings”, A. Busif and P.E. Coach, Martinet Monthly, Summer 2001)

The second device was the Foot-Leg Attenuation and Latency Normative Comparison (FLATULNC) meter. The FLATULNC meter, which replaced the Footpedal Activation Response Time Sensor (FARTS) in the 1990’s, has been the industry standard for testing the response-time of drivers in response to road events. The meter, with sensors on both the subject and the brake pedal, returns a reaction time score, the Sensate Balanced Derivative (SBD) in a range of values from 1 (narcoleptic) to 8 (meth user.)

Knowing that both test devices could be powered by 12V converters, the novelty and sheer inventiveness of our staffer’s design was his proposal to run both tests simultaneously, in situ, using a series of variable authority figures to develop a bimodal correlate to authority presence: anxiety level (GASSI Scores) and reaction time (SBD).

To test for variation of authority figure impact or anxiety generation, DLA designed a series of authority stress-inducing stimuli, chosen for their familiarity to most drivers. (See Table 2). 

TEST PROCEDURE
The test procedure was as follows:

1. Ten Boston drivers were selected at random from a pool of respondents to our posting at the Watertown RMV.
2. The test subjects were seated in the DLA ZipCar, connected to both the GASSI and FLATULNC meters, and asked to drive eight different routes on eight different days.
3. GASSI readings were taken at the beginning of each test drive and averaged to provide a baseline GASSI reading.
4. After approximately 5 minutes of driving to establish a baseline GASSI, test subjects were directed to a street where DLA Labs had placed a road work project marked by variable reaction stimuli (see Table 2).
5. GASSI readings were recorded at their maximum displacement from the baseline reading;
the FLATULNC reading was recorded at the first foot-leg impulse following a rise in the subject’s GASSI reading and these readings were used to calculate SBD scores.

RESULTS
The results of the study are shown in Figures 1 and 2, below. Of particular note:

The difference between the GASSI baseline scores of the two groups. The control (non-Boston) drivers maintain a slightly elevated anxiety level throughout the pre-stimuli driving; the baseline score of Boston drivers hovers near indifference to the driving experience prior to presentation of the test stimuli. (Table 1)

The growing discrepancy between the control group average and that of the Boston drivers. Early tests show Boston drivers to have a GASSI score approximately 50% lower than control drivers; by later tests, Boston driver GASSI scores are barely 35% of the control scores. (Table 1)

While there is shown to be a slight increase in GASSI for Boston drivers in response to a Boston police officer in Test 6 (See Table 1), this does not translate to an improvement in response time as measured by the FLATULNC meter. In fact, SBD scores for Boston drivers show response times that are approximately equal, on average, for a Boston Police officer (Test 6) and a hired Flag woman (Test 4)...and slightly slower than their response times to a mall security guard (Test 5). (See Table 2)

CONCLUSIONS
Once again, DLA research supports the widely held theory of a physiological basis for ass-like driving behavior. The limited response of the Boston driver to generally accepted images of authority would suggest a sensory cortex dysfunction among the test subjects. Further investigation of this hypothesis is well beyond the capabilities of DLA Labs to pursue and we have sent these results to researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital. While MGH has yet to respond to our proposals, we did receive a letter from Ben Stein on behalf of the Discovery Institute in which he expresses interest in DLA's work, especially since it seems to point to "behavior not fully explained by mainstream science...behavior so complex as to suggest an origin of more intelligent design."  Perhaps they are on to something:  we never thought that it might be someone else's hand on the wheel of those ass-like drivers!